WorldForge
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The WorldForge project is producing an open source framework for massively multiplayer online role-playing games. WorldForge's objective is to be for games what GNU and Debian have been for general purpose computer software. The intent lies in creating a widely used development framework and set of libraries by motivating interested developers to improve on the original code.
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[edit] History
The WorldForge Project began in October of 1998, under the original name of "Altima." It was originally envisioned to be an "Alternative to Ultima [Online]" and was mentioned in an article on the Slashdot news website, which became a major source of interested developers.
It was created by 16-year old Daniel Thomas of Surrey, England.
The original founder has since left the project along with most pre-Slashdot developers. Despite this, the community has become populous and able to sustain itself. A new governing system and selected coordinators has been established, fixing a new direction and a new goal. This community has decided to work on something much more significant than a "mere Ultima clone," and voted itself the new name "WorldForge". Avinash Gupta was the first leader of the project, followed by Bryce Harrington, but more recently developers have chosen not to select a leader, and instead rely on consensus among a small group of determined core developers to decide the overall direction of the project.
The WorldForge community has adopted the view that "massive" is unnecessary in a non-commercial game and has focused instead on "community" environments; estimating on the order or a few hundred players per game world, rather than thousands. Because most WorldForge servers are run by volunteers without strong bandwidth and hardware capacities this direction has also practical reasons.
[edit] Games
Several independent game projects have joined WorldForge, resulting in a lot of parallel development. The pig farming simulation Acorn - is the only complete, if modest, game so far has been released. Its' significance lies in providing a proof of concept that the project can actually integrate and deliver software, artwork and media, as well as maintain a community capable of creativity and innovation. Development of Acorn has tapered off as the project has moved on to more ambitious new games.
The primary focus has shifted to a tactical building game called Mason, which focuses on competitive construction and invention of buildings, traps, and mechanisms. The intent lies in developing powerful yet generic "item invention" algorithms capable of bringing a new dimension of dynamic content to interactive gaming, creating, in effect, a working physics model that enables players to build and operate objects within the game that were not originally intended by the creators. Other games have been and will continue to be developed alongside Mason.
The project is also beginning to branch out into other forms of entertainment (e.g. comics, paper-and-pencil gaming), as it finds that its processes and multi-disciplinary nature are equally applicable there.
[edit] Problems
WorldForge has been struggling with its long early development period during which it had to hash out its own protocols and processes. This has given it an air of being in "perpetual development." It is so far directed more at people interested in developing game software than playing games, resulting in a relative obscurity.
Because it supports many different game development efforts, and because much work goes on in parallel, it can confuse outsiders. The use of wiki software has been accused of worsening this situation. With volunteers coming and going and an iterative software development model, the project has frequently and repeatedly restarted pieces of software (such as the server). This may yet result in very tangled code and bad documentations, at worst bursting by severe feature bloat.
The project grapples with being thought of as "vaporware," so far giving more bold promises than solid delivery. The developers struggle with retaining a balance between gaining enough public profile to gain new participants and the alienation of gamers reminded of contemporary "overhyped" commercial MMORPGS. Other than infrequent release announcements it is rarely seen in the news. This sometimes gives the impression to other software and game projects that WorldForge is "remote" and may vanish before ever being finished.
